DAILY DOSE: August 14, 2021
Posted on 08/14/2021
1. Hakainde Hichilema is an opposition political leader in Zambia. Hichilema has an early lead in the tight election in the country. Officials from the two major parties have swapped accusations. Trailing after early results, Zambian President Edgar Lungu has claimed the presidential and parliamentary election are “not free and fair” after incidents of violence in three provinces.
2. The unconstitutional U.S. national eviction moratorium has been extended until October 2021 after a U.S. federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday rejected a request from landlords to put the move on hold. The moratorium on evictions was originally supposed to end June 30, 2021. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said her hands were tied because of an existing order by an appellate court, from the previous round of litigation, allowing the moratorium to continue. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh earlier said the moratorium was unconstitutional and was beyond the CDC’s power; however, he ruled it should be allowed to stand because “the CDC plans to end [it] in only a few weeks” and “those few weeks will allow for a more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental-assistance funds.”
3. FACT-CHECK: TRUE. Fact-checking website Snopes, which is supported by Facebook, has suspended its co-founder David Mikkelson for mass plagiarism. “Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement. Mikkelson owns 50% of Snopes and will remain as CEO.
4. SYDNEY EMBRACES POLICE STATE TO FIGHT COVID. Sydney residents and other residents of New South Wales will now face fines of up to A$ 3,700 for violating coronavirus stay-at-home orders. At a news conference, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said that fines for stay-at-home order breaches had been increased from A$ 1,000 to up to A$ 3,700. 4 COVID deaths were reported in NSW on Saturday. From March 2020 till August 2021, the whole country of Australia has counted 953 deaths associated with COVID.
5. Belarus is set to receive nearly a US$ 1 billion lifeline from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
6. Israel approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech booster vaccine for those over the age of 50.
